How many people do you know who can say they have a bruise on their bum from clown? Not many, I’d venture to guess. Well I can.
Monday morning had us showing off our “special skills” in our clown class. A special skill for a clown is quite different from what us normal humans would consider a special skill. One girl had her clown’s socks become opera singing sock puppets. Someone else could read minds through a complex series of hand motions and sounds. My clown? My clown was skilled at juggling slips of paper. As I was directed through the exercise by Michael, I found myself hopping along on one foot while the other foot balanced a slip of paper I was juggling. Hopping along (in socks… my fatal flaw), I slipped and fell on the floor. Always the performer, I simply used it and tried to recover as quickly as I could. It was hilarious, embarrassing (but what is clown class for if not to laugh at our own missteps?), and now I have a lovely bruised bum.
Later that afternoon, we met our director for our new project. Tina is a marvelous woman. She’s about 5 feet tall and quite old but with all the energy and passion of someone four times her size and three times as young. With the mouth of a sailor, she says exactly what she’s thinking and feeling at all times. It is immediately apparent how talented she is, she is not one to shy away from a dirty joke, and is the perfect person to be working with for our Restoration comedy pieces. Due to her age and some occasional medical issues, she needs a lot of help carrying the piles of scripts necessary for rehearsal and generally needs assistance every so often. Because of this, she asked who would be interested in being her assistant director. Alessandra and I both volunteered and are having a great time helping her out. It means we get to hang out with her more and I couldn’t think of anything better. After introducing ourselves to her in a lengthy, thorough fashion, she explained what we will be working on. For our showing, we will perform 5 different scenes, a dance, and a song. The scenes are from various Restoration plays and affords each person the chance to shine. The plays we will be working from are The Rover, The Provoked Wife, The Plain Dealer, The Beaux Stratagem, and The Basset Table. Each is a hilariously entertaining piece and we’ve got our pick of some wonderful scenes.
On Tuesday, we had to give our character presentations in James’ class. That was a bit intimidating but it ended up being very interesting to listen to everyone’s presentation. The music I chose for my character (Queen Margaret) was The Firebird by Stravinski. Since this is technically a whole ballet worth of music, I brought in the last three movements. It is an incredible piece of music and I encourage you all to go listen to it. After text, we had pure voice with George (who is quickly turning in to one of my favorite tutors that we have) and improvisation with Adam. Both were great classes, as usual. This was our first time having Adam since the first week of class. We played a lot of games focused on the three concepts of accept, listen, commit. It was a fun way of practicing skills that are not only useful for improv but also for scene work as well. In George’s class we worked a lot with our breath and some exercises that are good for figuring out how to make your voice fill a given space.
As you can obviously tell, I’m loving the training that we receive at LAMDA but this week I realized a concrete reason why I love it so much. The tutors don’t just blindly lead you in exercises, expecting you to follow along and immediately gain something from it. Instead, they teach an exercise, give you the opportunity to discuss it as a class or with a partner, and then explain what it is useful for. If it isn’t useful to you (or if you didn’t really feel like you got anything from it) that’s ok! No one cares or is offended because chances are the next exercise will yield brilliant results for you but not for someone else. There is a sense of cohesion about the training – what you learn in voice with George can be applied in rehearsal with Tina and what you learn in physical theatre with Yorgos can be applied in text with James. Everyone is working towards a common goal which is to give you exercises and tools that you can draw on to make yourself a better actor. No one is trying to further an individual agenda or simply spew knowledge at you. I think this is a trait that many American theatre schools could learn from.
Wednesday had us in applied voice, historical dance, and physical theatre, followed by rehearsal. In historical dance, we learned yet another dance. This brings our tally up to having learned 7 dances already. The smile never leaves my face in that class. It’s wonderful to be learning choreography, moving, and wearing elegant skirts. In Yorgos’ physical theatre class we did some conditioning and then a really interesting partner exercise. The conditioning was a welcome addition to the day. I loved getting my blood pumping and working out. The partner exercise we did was really similar to some dance improvisation exercises I’ve done in the past. Basically we just had to listen to ourselves listening to our partner’s movement. Teresa and I paired up and the first time we went through the exercise it was a little weird, starting and stopping, going in and out. After we talked about it, we tried it again. We were focused, unafraid, and did not second guess ourselves the second time. That second time went very well and it was really cool to be moving so in sync with another person without having planned anything in advance. Just goes to show how much a little eye contact and connection can do to people…
Today, I began the day with singing where I performed my song for the class. I have never felt so confident singing in front of people nor have I ever sung a song so well. I guess I really missed my calling as an Elizabethan lute song singer.
Next came combat which was taught exclusively by Christina today. We continued work on our fight choreography and even added a bit on towards the end. I was sweating more than was probably appropriate but I was having such a great time. There’s something really empowering about being able to adeptly yield a rapier and dagger.
Rehearsal with Tina was a hoot, as it has been all week. We’ve been assigned our scenes and I am working on a Mistress Sullen scene from The Beaux Stratagem. It’s a great scene and the character is effortlessly witty. Tina keeps telling me to “think Maggie Smith.” As if I needed more reasons to watch YouTube clips of Maggie Smith all evening…
I am now home, working on some homework and relaxing. Tomorrow Emma arrives which I am quite excited about. We will spend the weekend being super tourists and exploring the city. And what better way to spend Valentine’s Day than getting dinner with Emma?
Until next time!
Cheers!